“Eez, th’ waggon ruts; thaay goes drough Akkern Chace down to Warren. Be you afeared?” seeing Geoffrey hesitated. “Thaay’ll lead ee drough th’ wood; it be main dark under th’ pollard oaks:
Akkern Chace
Be a unkid place,
When th’ moon do show hur face.
“Wur be my quart?”
Geoffrey gave him sixpence; he touched his forelock, called his dog, and whistled down the hill. Geoffrey pushed on as rapidly as his horse, now a little weary, would go for the firs. In half an hour he reached it, and found a waggon track which, as the boy had said, after a while led him into a wood—scattered pollard oaks, hawthorn bushes, and fir plantations. Now two fresh difficulties arose: the grey first limped and then went lame; and the question began to arise, Would Margaret after all come this way? In the gathering twilight, might she not take the circuitous, but safer, highway? She might even have already passed. By this time he was well into the wood—it consisted of firs there. The grey went so lame he resolved to go no farther, but to wait. He dismounted, threw himself at length upon the grass beside the green track, and the grey immediately applied himself to grazing with steady contentment.
The tall green trees shut out all but a narrow lane of sky, azure, but darkening; not the faintest breath of moving air relieved the sultry brooding heat of the summer twilight. From the firs came a fragrance, filling the atmosphere with a sweet resinous odour. The sap exuding through the bark formed in white viscous drops upon the trunks. Indolently reclining, half drowsy in the heat, he could see deep into the wood, along on the level ground between the stems, for the fallen “needles” checked vegetation. A squirrel gambolled hither and thither in this hollow space; with darting rapid movements it came towards him, and then suddenly shot up a fir and was instantly out of sight among the thick foliage. In the stillness he could hear the tearing of the fibres of grass as the grey fed near. A hare came stealing up the track, with the peculiar shuffling, cunning gait they have when rambling as they deem unwatched. Limping slowly, “Wat” stayed to choose tit-bits among the grass—so near that when an insect tickled him and he shook his head Geoffrey heard the tips of his ears flap together. Daintily he pushed his nose among the tussocks, then craned his neck and looked into the thickets. Where the track turned at the bend the shadows crept out, toning down the twilight with mystic uncertainty.
Suddenly the hare rose, elevated his ears—Geoffrey could see the nostrils working—and then, with one thrust as it were of his lean flanks, flung himself into the wood. The grey ceased feeding, raised his head, and listened. In a few moments came the slow thud of hoofs walking. From behind the bushes Geoffrey watched the bend of the track. Then the sweet voice he knew so well floated towards him. Margaret was singing, little thinking any one was near:
“And as she went along the high-road,
The weather being hot and dry,
She sat her down upon a green bank,
And her true love came riding by.”
Her chestnut whinnied, seeing the other horse on turning the corner.
“Margaret!”
“Sir!” blushing, and resentful that he should have surprised her. She had been thinking of him. She felt as though he had caught her and discovered her secret. She instantly took refuge in hauteur.